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Middletown Museum set to open at new location

While the new location of the Middletown Museum is comparable in size to its former space at 12566 Shelbyville Road, museum officials hope the increased visibility of the new location will attract visitors.

In the roughly 200 years since Middletown was established, the city has been a "bustling business center" off the Ohio River, a temporary campsite for Confederate soldiers and home to one of the state's largest chicken operations — one that had nothing to do with Colonel Sanders.

And after a year of preparation, the keeper of the city's history — the Middletown Museum — is set to open Sept. 6 at its new location, 11700 Main St., in the heart of downtown.

While the new location is comparable in size to its former space at 12566 Shelbyville Road, museum officials hope the increased visibility will attract visitors.

"We're more centrally located for the folks that visit the antique shops and eateries," said Mark Stigers, vice president of Historic Middletown Inc., the organization under which the Middletown Museum operates.

Nancy Wetherby, the museum's acting director, said talks of moving the museum to a more visible location downtown had been going on for a long time but hadn't happened due to lack of funding. Last year, Mayor Byron Chapman and the City Commission allocated $131,800 in the city budget for renovation of the museum's new site, a space previously occupied by Eastern Area Community Ministries.

Although the museum will have rotating exhibits, most of the items on display are part of the museum's permanent collection — items such as the tuxedo former Kentucky Gov. Lawrence Wetherby, a Middletown native, wore to his inauguration, and an old cheese cabinet from the former Davis Tavern, which once stood where city hall is today. All of the items were donated to the museum from families with Middletown ties, Wetherby said.

"We're trying to get more of the folks that are old-time families to submit their family histories so we can be more of a research facility for families that are from this area," he said.

Wetherby, who is also president of Historic Middletown Inc., said the museum will be about 90 percent complete by the time its first official guests walk through the door, although about a dozen people have already wandered in.

"We're excited to get it opened," said Wetherby. "We hope our fellow citizens like it, and we're trying to make something that ... will show our history and people can be proud to see."

Reporter Kirsten Clark can be reached at (502) 582-4144 or on Twitter by following @kirstenlclark.